how many ways could the past be rewritten?

i wish i could recollect your thoughts from the missing pages

piece them together in a way that's coherent

and expressive of how you truly felt

your emotions and deep sense of sorrow

i would go over the same lines over and over again

marked alphabets on blank pages

hoping they may carry 

a different meaning this time

I miss you in the ways I can't speak of.

There comes a time when a girl has to leave the mother's nest- go out into the world, live her life, learn independence; but this little birdie is afraid. Her mother hasn't been home in days, had not prepped her to fly away. All she does is sit there and wait. She's not ready yet. 

In the silence of stillness, she whispers a prayer. Always, she is looking for a place to call home.

  This is the preface of an apology I have written for myself.

Dear me, 

I'm sorry for everything I had made you out to be. You truly deserved so much more and so much better.

Everything I am doing these days is shielding you from the harm and to protect you in the worst ways possible. 

The dissociation doesn't get better. I'm sorry.

I hope you will feel safe one day, I really do.

Love,

me.

四月

April scorched of burnout

    tired and eager to ignite again

April learned to be alone

    after everyone moves forward

April plagued of failures and inadequacies 

    reminders of all that was lost or never was

April starts hurting herself again

April moves into May

days ever get better

27/4/2021

 I know His grace is infinite, but why does it feel like I am running out of it?

joel

How does no one do anything about this bleeding body?

Do they not see? 

The blood running dry,

smearing the edge of every picture 

she tries to paint.

Do they not see?

The ruby-rued flush,

crimson stains imbued on each

fabric of facade she puts herself in.

Do they not see?

The scarlet tally,

wine spills tainting 

sleeves of her favourite blouse.

kings

My mother told me you were wanted-
but from her diaries I read of a silver Honda,
its rolling into a ditch, its tin foil crumpling;
her little accident that happened when I was still in her womb.

They took her to the hospital after and searched for a heartbeat,

My heartbeat.         They couldn’t find it.        And then they did.

I like to imagine the absence my mother must have felt in the

e m p t y   s  p  a  c  e

between her arms and her chest

for the brief moments she thought I was never going to be in it.

I wonder if she ever learned to miss that feeling.

She never tried to tire her pulse again after the incident,
kept herself safe long enough to give birth to me,
to watch me grow up, but also to witness 
the same dark thoughts grow into my head.
I didn't want to replicate her but inheritance was unsought
and my line of lineage is of one trying to end its own.
I got a head start on dying before I even came into the world;
that little bundle of light

bundling rope for a necklace,

carving indexes of incongruence

on tainted canvas.

I wonder how disappointed she must be to see me like this.

This body feels less and less like the house I grew up in.

These thoughts in my head intrusive,

I try to retract them under the places it dug itselves into,

but sadness clung onto my skin.

These bittersweet memories become nestled

under cracks and spaces unseen.

All the hurt and pain I have harboured seem to have evaporated,

and now I’m left with these mismatched pieces that don’t quite fit right anymore.

Seams stitched tightly, 

unforgivingness to come undone,

but muscle memory still in overdrive.

I only ever drove on highways late night.

Street lights illuminate roads as the moon does the sky,

blinding headlights of every car I overtake in the rearview mirror.

I rest my eyes and lift my hands off the steering wheel until I felt like I was       flying

The pounding of my heart against my ribcage

so hard it felt like it was about to break.

I ask for this car to swerve senselessly and catapult

me into some uncertain dark.

Unbirthed, unharmed, unseen, undone.

I wonder if she felt the same on the night she almost took me with her.

ezra-nehemiah

ever so often, something from my past comes back to remind me of the person I had left behind, the life no longer in my reach. 

silly little mistakes here and there. all the dreams and versions of myself that I had given up.

no matter the amount of times I fail or end up disappointing myself, I tell myself to believe there's still a future for me, that there's still a redemption point. but what I always had at the back of my mind is how it's true, but the future will look so different. an entirely different painted story of the end. could it ever still be beautiful?

Value

"it hurts that they see you nothing more than something to be used."

"it hurts even more that you let them."

Suspended sunrise

The crowded trees and bleached barren sky of January 

carve into me like knives of bleakness and desolation. 

Time goes on moving relentlessly 

And with every tick of a second I am reminded 

of the pendulum ticking away at my innocence 

of the hourglass with sand piling up on the wrong end 

I could still hear my mother’s effaced cries in this now hollow house 

The silence woven by her absence that took up so much space 

Something took me back to the towering 

A slow drift that took me before I had realised 

I am drowning in cascading waves of yearning 

With those mountains colliding within my chest 

All that humanity 

These are the days she left behind.

bruised knees, all broken

look at those mountains colliding in that chest of yours

could you be redeemed with all that chaos within you

all that humanity

do you remember what it was like to see the world from an eternity perspective?